Bert’s jade green eyes, full of awe, glancing nervously around the Henry Street lobby. Please, I sobbed, doubling over. Bert pointing out the stone lions from the top deck of the Fifth Avenue bus on a floral summer evening. Bert with his head thrown back, moaning “Lil” as he grasps my shoulders and thrusts into me, the two of us clutching desperately, sparkling with sweat on the narrow mattress beneath the window, believing that we have all the time in the world, that we will never grow old, never die, never be anything but two lovers in that moment, bucking and alive. Bert winking delightedly at a cigarette girl in the foyer of the Ziegfeld. Bert nodding with his eyes closed as I read aloud to him from Hegel’s Dialectic of Reason. Bert crashing our truck. Bert quickly reaching across the table to add a second pat of butter to his toast when he thinks I’m not looking, his face boyish with mischief. My love. Come back. Pleasepleaseplease. Bert teaching Isaac to ride his first two-wheeler, running behind him with his hand on the back fender, cheering “G-g-g-g-go!” before releasing our child pedaling furiously down the sidewalk. Bert sliding his hand down the front of my flowered silk dress, giving my bosom a playful squeeze in a chiming elevator minutes before a business meeting with representatives from DuPont. Bert jiggling the ice cubes in his glass of rye, pleading, Lil, why won’t you believe me? Bert looking baleful in his powder blue terry-cloth bathrobe as he bends down to pick up the newspaper from the doormat the morning after Robert Kennedy is assassinated. After Nixon resigns. After the fall of Saigon. Bert sprawled across our four-poster bed, his left arm flung over his forehead, snoring with abandon. Bert, setting down the photograph of our grandson, turning to me in his sweaty tennis whites in our vaulted Palm Beach parlor, his weathered face earnest and poignant with love as he smiles and says gently, Come with me, doll.
Oh, that last conversation: That horrible last conversation! I could not bear to think of it! All he had wanted, my husband, despite all our money, despite all our success and fame, was simply a lovely lunch with his wife on the patio. Yet look at what I’d done!
Pouring myself a scotch, I swallowed it in one hot, punishing gulp. Then another. For the first time in decades, I longed to go back to a church, to kneel in the little cubby behind a heavy, velvet curtain and whisper my sins through the quatrefoils.
My beloved husband, my dear Bert. I had been hideous. Why could I not let him simply drink his wine and eat in peace? Why had I needed to hector him so? Why had his poignancy, which I’d once loved so fiercely, made me grow so contemptuous?
Everyone I had ever loved, I had repelled.
I was monstrous.
I tore through Bert’s dressing room, pulling out his jackets, shirts, cardigans, pressing them to my face, trying to inhale as much of him as I could. From my own, I saw my Blackglama mink, winking from its plastic casing. A gift from him for my sixtieth birthday. Sniffling, I put it on, trying to imagine that Bert’s hands were draping it across my shoulders. I tried to get some comfort from it, though I did not deserve it in the least. The sable shrug that he bought me one Christmas—I put that on as well and with a struggle. Pearls, a sapphire brooch I had tossed carelessly into my jewelry box. One by one I began to don everything that Bert had ever given me as a gift over the years. I could not get enough of him close to me. I jammed cocktail rings onto my swollen, arthritic fingers. One brooch I pinned in my hair; I clipped earrings onto the cuffs of my sleeves, until I was positively dripping with Bert’s presents.
A pigeon landed on our windowsill, cooing.
I would go to him. To meet my Bert. With his merry eyes. His childlike stammer. The only man who ever loved me at all. The man whom I killed with my petty cruelties and bossiness.
Waddling over to the nightstand, I pulled out Mrs. Dinello’s yellowed, cracked Bible—still the repository of all the mementos from Bert’s and my early courtship. Clutching it to my bosom, I took a deep breath. I was ready. I was primed.
Yet just as suddenly, as I stood there like that, any sense of a plan deserted me. I was very, very drunk, I realized. Had I meant to climb up onto our roof terrace and perform a swan dive in my furs? Who the hell could even climb in my condition? Miserably, I limped into the bathroom. Inside the medicine chest, I found only a couple of Nembutals and Valiums left in their little amber vials. The impossibly sharp Wusthof knives in the kitchen, they were under Sunny’s watch. So now what? We didn’t even own so much as a staple gun, a ladder. The apartment building had a maintenance crew. Bert’s shaving razor was new. Electric. Preposterous.
I remembered Mr. Lefkowitz, all those years ago on Orchard Street, yelling at his neighbors that he was so poor he did not even have the means to commit suicide properly. Me, I was too rich.
“Put Bella Flora on the market,” I ordered Edgar. “The fixtures, the furniture, the fountains. Every goddamn thing.”
“Lillian, I understand you’re upset, but you may want to hold off for a little while. The market right now—”
“Don’t you dare talk to me about the market!” I cried, knocking over a teacup someone had placed beside me on my desk. “You think I give a shit? I want it sold now. I never want to set foot on that property again.”
I had my new secretary go through all the condolence cards and telegrams. “Put the ones from anyone famous in a folder. Everything else get rid of.”
“But, Mrs. Dunkle, you’ve gotten bags full of cards from children all over America. Handmade.”
“Burn them all.” I was not eating. I could not sleep again without a pill. “You think I want to look at a drawing of a crying clown made by some kid in Omaha?
“All four televisions in the apartment are to be kept on at all times,” I told Sunny. “And I want all of them turned to the same channel, do you understand? No news. I want Days of Our Lives. I want Match Game and $10,000 Pyramid. I want cartoons.”
Every night I fell asleep before the spasming screen with a drink. Until one morning when I awoke unexpectedly. Jerking awake, I screamed. Bert’s head flickered before me on the bureau. Please, I invite you. Come to Dunkle’s, he said carefully, without stuttering, wearing his silly Ice Cream King crown. Certainly, if it’s good enough for my wife—he smiled at me adoringly—our famous ice cream is good enough for you.
The very last commercial Bert and I had ever filmed together. In all the pandemonium, no one had thought to take it off the air.
The Nazis got one thing right, I thought, sipping bourbon in my office one Sunday after the Funhouse. If you’re already in hell, work offers the only promise of relief.
I called my secretary at her home. “Why are there blank spaces?” I cried. “My calendar should be covered in ink. Send me out to visit our franchises in Duluth. Send me on plant inspections. Every goddamn industry dinner. Fund-raiser. Telethon. I want you to RSVP.”
Our competition—as well as some of our very own executives— assumed that now that Bert was gone, Isaac would take over fully, the company would go public, or the Dunkle’s Ice Cream Corporation would be sold. They assumed I was merely a figurehead. How they underestimated me. How little they knew. Bert left no instructions when he died; there was no succession plan in writing. But there did not need to be. The company had always been as much mine as his. And whatever I said, of course, went.
I telephoned Isaac. “I’m going to put a plaque reading ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ in my office,” I said. “That ought to shore up the work ethic around here.”
“Ma,” he groaned. “You’ve been drinking. Where’s your driver? Go home. It’s Sunday.”
“Excuse me, but did you see our sales figures for this quarter? We’re hemorrhaging. And why is the entire southeast region paying three cents more per paper napkin than anywhere else?”
“You can’t just work all the time, Ma,” Isaac said, his voice webbed with fatigue. “Even if the numbers are bad. Take a day off. Go out with a friend to lunch. See a museum.”
“I don’t have any friends.” And it was true. Everyone I’d known socially had been through Bert—his t
ennis club, the foundation—industry couples. The wives in our business, I never cared for them in the least. They were either decorative scatterbrains or tedious matrons. What could I possibly say to them? And now? Certainly nobody invited widows to anything—even celebrity widows like me. Unless, of course, they wanted money.
“Your father was my only friend,” I said quietly.
Isaac exhaled. “Look, Ma. I know it’s difficult, but you’ve got to find something you enjoy outside of the business. You’re making yourself crazy.”
What he meant, of course, was that I was making him crazy. Yet what the hell was I supposed to do? I had been working since I was five years old. My shmendrik son, he thought I could just stop?
Besides, going out to the theater—or the moving pictures, or even reading a book—anything Bert and I used to do together, was now too unbearably sad.
In the evenings, loath to go home to our empty apartment, I started ordering our driver to take me to Bert’s old haunts—places he used to go without me—so that I could feel his presence. I ate dinner alone at his favorite table at Luchow’s, at Sammy’s Roumanian Steak House, at Peter Luger’s in Brooklyn. “Serve me what you used to serve my husband,” I told the worried-looking waiters. Sometimes I sat in the car outside the Russian baths where Bert used to “take a schvitz” with Isaac. I watched the men walk in and out. His age. Dressed like him. One evening I told the chauffeur, “Take me where you used to take Bert to buy presents for me.” Bonwit’s and Saks were now staying open well past 5:00 P.M.
Myself, I’d never had much patience for the rigmarole of shopping. All that schlepping and disrobing—for someone with my leg it was only burdensome, dispiriting. In the past I had my secretaries go to department stores for me or make telephone calls to have items delivered.
Yet suddenly, after all these years, I discovered something: Stepping into Bergdorf Goodman’s and being waited on was immensely gratifying! Why had no one ever explained this to me before? A saleswoman ushered me into an exclusive dressing room, seated me on a velvet banquette, offered me ice water with lemon, and brought garments to me for my perusal. Everyone fussed over me grandly, like I was royalty! Yes, Mrs. Dunkle. Of course, Mrs. Dunkle. Oh, try this one instead. It will look divine on you. “Give me that in the coral silk,” I said imperiously, “not paisley.” Never did I feel as beautiful or as powerful, darlings, as when I shopped.
Isaac had wanted me to develop a little hobby.
So sue me: I did.
One Thursday I bought sixteen Chanel suits, ten thousand dollars’ worth of sportswear by Geoffrey Beene, a dozen cashmere sweaters in all the latest colors: avocado, burgundy, mauve. Five pairs of Foster Grant sunglasses, three Yves Saint Laurent chiffon evening gowns, four hundred dollars’ worth of costume jewelry, and a belted coat with a silver-fox collar. “I refuse to dress like a little old lady,” I announced to the salesgirls. “It’s bad enough I wear plastic slipcovers on television.” I purchased Diamonds by the Yard at Tiffany’s and an enormous topaz pendant to wear as “casual” jewelry. A full set of Louis Vuitton luggage. A dozen handbags in assorted colors from Gucci. How marvelous to be the consumer, not the poor schmuck somewhere in the sweatshop, the tannery, the leatherworkers, painstakingly making it all for pennies.
Once you purchased something new—oh, darlings, you just wanted to do it again! The thrill of acquisition gave you the same bloom as the first sip of a cocktail. A pair of Ming-dynasty jade dragons I bought from Christie’s to flank the entryway of the house in Bedford. Another Cadillac: wine red. A silver-lacquered grand piano. I went mad for antiques, redecorating our homes completely in Bert’s taste. Inlaid credenzas, damask chaise longues. A mahogany bar. Crystal chandeliers for all the bathrooms. Why not? One weekend I flew all the way to London for Harrods’ annual sale. On the Concorde, no less! The harrowing journey that had taken my family eighteen days on a rancid, belching steamer I now completed in three and a half hours, gliding fifty-six thousand feet above the earth, sipping champagne and nibbling wine-soaked figs above all turbulence and weather, at the edge of outer space itself, the ocular curve of the earth visible through the little convex window like the cerulean eye of God himself. In my little leather seat, I felt almost holy, anointed. I felt like an astronaut. It would’ve been perfect if it hadn’t made me sob. For Bert should have been there with me.
I hired a “personal shopping consultant” from Bergdorf’s to accompany Petunia and me from there on. We went to Paris for the couture collections. Fashion shows, oh, they were the most marvelous theater! Better than church! At Cartier’s I ordered a magnificent jewel-encrusted cane for me and matching gold-and-diamond dog tags and collars for Petunia. Other than myself, she was my favorite customer to shop for, of course, as she kvetched about nothing. A pink satin dog bed trimmed with Chantilly lace. A Burberry dog raincoat. A neon light-up water bowl from Fiorucci.
The only problem with shopping, I discovered, was paying. Whereas for years I had meticulously kept track of every penny I’d spent—ten cents for the daily newspaper, forty-nine cents for nylons, et cetera—now the sums were far too large. Seeing the bills, writing the checks, oh, how it pained me! Why, it nearly took all the joy out of buying altogether. And so, to soften the blow, I started having my items charged to the Dunkle’s Ice Cream Corporation instead. This way, when I received the bills at the office, I could pretend that rather than “purchases” they were “expenses.” Expenses, darlings, were so much easier to justify. Everything I bought, I expensed to the company, then had gift-wrapped and delivered directly to Park Avenue. So they genuinely seemed like presents. When I arrived home from work each day, there was a cascade of surprises waiting for me to open.
“Ma, what is all this stuff?” Isaac said one morning when he came over with some papers he wanted me to sign. My large front parlor had become my “gift room,” filled with my purchases, arranged on coffee tables, shelves, and settees like so many objets d’art in a museum. “What’s that pelt doing on the lampshade?”
“It’s chinchilla. A dinner jacket.”
“It’s a fire hazard.”
“The lamp is new, too. From Sotheby’s. The chair as well. Your father’s taste, of course. He would’ve thought they were marvelous, wouldn’t he?”
“Oh, Ma.” Isaac sighed. Aimlessly, he picked up a Judith Leiber evening bag—in the shape of a baby penguin covered in crystals—and set it back down dispiritedly beside another shaped like a slice of watermelon. His eyes glossed over a dozen assorted pairs of silver candlesticks arranged atop a tooled leather ottoman. A pile of Hermès scarves. A brass samovar purchased from an antiques dealer on Madison Avenue. An Edwardian secretary desk with a hutch. Fifteen Madame Alexander dolls still in their boxes from FAO Schwarz. The room did look a bit like E. Lazarre’s pawnshop. But tasteful, darlings. Tasteful. And certainly clean.
“You’re not planning on keeping all this, are you?” Isaac said.
“Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I?”
“You have the receipts taped to everything.”
“Well, how else will everyone know how expensive they are? Sunny!” I hollered. “Get my son here a cocktail, will you?”
“No thanks, Ma,” he said—always unsmiling, my son. “I can’t stay long.”
“Come.” I motioned.
In my study I’d had a business line installed and one of those new Xerox machines, the size of a small meat locker. This way I never had to not be working. “What do you think?” I said. I’d had Promovox send over markups for my newest idea, “Mocktail Milkshakes.” Several different approaches sat propped up on the easel by Bert’s mahogany desk. One ad showed a close-up of a gorgeous young couple straddling bicycles and toasting each other on a country road with Dunkle’s milk shakes. Another showed them at a discoteque. “It’s Mocktail Hour,” the tagline read.
Isaac stared at it. After a minute he chewed on his lip in a way that made his jaw contort to the left. “You sure this is the way you wanna go, Ma?”
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Ever since Bert died, I had been developing Mocktails. The idea came to me one afternoon at a party at Merv Griffin’s house, when somebody handed me a Brandy Alexander. Oddly, I had never tasted one before. The wonderful, medicinal shock of brandy was blunted by what seemed to be chocolate milk. “What the hell is this?” I blinked, holding the frosted glass at a distance. “Bosco?”
“I thought you’d like it, Lillian.” Merv chuckled. “Being the Ice Cream Queen, as you are.”
“A cocktail should taste like a cocktail,” I grumbled, leaning back on one of his chaise longues in my caftan. “Not a goddamn milk shake.” Yet Merv caught me smiling. What can I say? It was delicious.
Drinks like these, I realized, could be our antidote to Umlaut. After all, it was the seventies. Hosting my television show as I did, I saw how the culture had changed. Nobody wanted to be a good soldier or Horatio Alger anymore. Nobody wanted to knuckle under and build. Parents, when they came to our studio, they were dressed in the same jeans and satin baseball jackets as their children. Adult things had become juvenile. Fruity, ridiculous cocktails. Paint-box-colored cars with cutesy, preschool names like Pinto, Gremlin, and Beetle. Miniature Sony TVs, like for a doll. Everyone wanted to be a child forever, it seemed.
Except high. I hosted the pop singers. I met the artists. So I knew about the drugs. Andy Warhol, the night he brought me to Studio 54, it was like a circus tent. A neon crescent moon descended from the ceiling, inhaling a string of white beads from an illuminated spoon. “Oh, my God, Lillian! Look! Mother Goose for Cokeheads!” Harvey Ballentine squealed.
Alcohol-flavored milk shakes: They were the perfect concoction for the times.
The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street: A Novel Page 40